Last updated: 26 August 2026
30-Second Verdict
It's a draw — 7.8 apiece — and the two scorecards add up to exactly the same number by completely different routes. The Roffu wins four categories out of seven and still can't get ahead, because the Äris holds the only perfect score on either card. One of these is a kitchen you can see into. The other is a kitchen that does two menus and occasionally forgets your order.
Wolkenkraft Äris: 7.8/10 | £129.00 XLUX Roffu: 7.8/10 | £109.00
Buy the Wolkenkraft Äris if: - You think about residue — what's building up behind the screen, in the bend you can't see - You want the ECA airpath, which is the best cleaning system in portable vaping and it isn't a close race - You want a five-year warranty and German assembly rather than a twelve-month one and a QC lottery - You microdose: 0.15g of titanium convection is a dose, not a session, and that suits you
Buy the XLUX Roffu if: - You want two chambers — quartz for flavour, stainless steel for density — and you'll actually use both - Battery matters: a removable 18650 at 3200mAh and 10–12 sessions beats 6–8 from a sealed cell - You want on-demand as well as session mode, for precise pain-management hits - You'd rather save £20 and spend it on a spare cell and a decent grinder
Quick Specs Face-Off:
| Wolkenkraft Äris | XLUX Roffu | |
|---|---|---|
| Heating | Pure convection, titanium chamber | True convection, quartz + steel chambers |
| Heat-up | ~20–30 seconds | ~15–20 seconds |
| Battery | Sealed 2600mAh, 6–8 sessions, pass-through | Removable 18650 3200mAh, 10–12 sessions |
| Bowl | ~0.15g | 0.2–0.3g |
| Weight | 133g | 166g |
| Modes | Session only (3–7 min adjustable) | Session + on-demand |
| Warranty | 5 years | 1 year |
| Price | £129.00 | £109.00 |
The Hook
There are two kinds of place I eat lunch, and neither one is trying to be the other.
The first is the canteen with the open kitchen — the sort where the pass is glass, the steel is scrubbed to a shine, and you can watch every stage of your food from hopper to plate. There's one thing on today and it's done properly. The portions are small and precisely the same every day. Nobody in that building is winging it. And the extractor over the range is deafening — a permanent industrial roar that means you shout your order and give up on conversation. You put up with it because the roar is the reason the place is spotless.
The second is the gastropub on a Friday. Two kitchens' worth of ambition on one menu — the small plates that are genuinely brilliant and the big roast that fills you up — a proper cellar, a bigger plate for less money. When it's on, it's the best value meal for miles. And once in a while your starter arrives after your main, or the pass is short-handed, and the whole thing wobbles in a way the canteen never would. You forgive it, because you saw what it can do.
The Wolkenkraft Äris is the spotless canteen. The XLUX Roffu is the busy gastropub. Both cost about the same. Both feed you well. Only one of them lets you see the pass.
I called the Äris the Dyson fan of vaporisers in its review, and the Roffu got the Kärcher pressure washer treatment in its own — both of which were about force and noise, and both of which you can set aside here. What matters for this pairing is narrower and more useful: these are two pure-convection portables, £20 apart, that landed on exactly the same overall score from completely opposite category cards. Same total, different arithmetic. That's the whole article.
We stock both at HerbVape.co.uk — details and pricing below.
Vapour Quality
Both reviews scored this 8.0, and unusually for a dead heat, the two 8s are made of nearly the same ingredient: hot air through herb, no hot walls, no conduction blur.
The Äris runs pure convection through a titanium chamber into a pyrex glass mouthpiece, and its review's line stands up — the titanium adds nothing, and that's everything. At 175°C the terps arrive individually, limonene then myrcene then the background notes; at 190°C density climbs without losing clarity, four to five draws' worth. Its genuine party trick is at the top: above 205°C it holds density where cheaper convection thins out, because the 2600mAh cell and a dedicated fan motor keep pushing air during the draw rather than coasting. The catch is the 0.15g chamber. Concentrated, efficient, and one bowl is one session — full stop.
The Roffu answers with two chambers instead of one. The quartz chamber at 180–195°C is where its review planted its flag: the best flavour under £150, terps separating individually, draw five and six still delivering when conduction would have faded by three. Swap in the stainless steel at 200°C+ and you get density instead of definition — thicker, more visible, less resolved. The zirconia cooling spiral is doing real work; its review reckoned the vapour arrives cooler at 210°C than the Mighty+'s cooling unit at equivalent temps, which is not a compliment I hand out casually.
The call: dead level, and the tiebreak is what you want from a chamber. The Äris gives you one chamber that's neutral to the point of being clinical, and 0.15g of it. The Roffu gives you a flavour chamber and a cloud chamber and 0.2–0.3g of either. One kitchen, one dish, done immaculately — or two kitchens on the same pass.
The Strain Test, Side by Side
Here's where I have to be straight with you: neither of these devices has run the site control. Jack Herer and Wedding Cake go through every vaporiser I review so the strain is the constant and the device is the variable — but both of these were reviewed on other flower, the Äris on Gelonade and Curaleaf Gorilla Girl T24, the Roffu on Jealousy and Noidecs T20:C4 Delahaze. I'm not going to invent control data to make a tidier table. What I can do honestly is line the two reviews up by terpene family, because the families overlap almost exactly, and note where that comparison is softer than usual.
The bright family — terpinolene, limonene, pinene up top. This is Jack Herer's neighbourhood, and both devices were tested in it. The Äris took Gelonade at 170°C and produced three draws of what its review called artisan-quality: sharp lemon zest through titanium and pyrex, terpinolene shimmering underneath with an incense-like depth, and the 0.15g bowl concentrating the complexity rather than diffusing it — more terp density per draw than a 0.3g conduction bowl. The Roffu took Delahaze at 165°C on the on-demand trigger and found the same incense-piney-citrus top note, two button-held draws, each one deliberately short so the bowl isn't cooking between hits. Same terpene, two philosophies: the Äris concentrates the bright notes into a small bowl and runs a timed session over them; the Roffu leaves a bigger bowl mostly untouched and takes the top notes off it in bursts. For fragile top-note strains that difference matters, because terpinolene is the first thing to leave and the last thing you get back. The Roffu's on-demand is the more surgical instrument here. The Äris is the cleaner room to use it in. I'd want both on Jack, and I can't tell you which would win, because neither has met it.
The heavy caryophyllene family — pepper, gas, dessert sweetness over earth. Wedding Cake's neighbourhood, and again both were tested in it. The Äris ran Gorilla Girl T24 at 175°C for warm peppery caryophyllene with the diesel clear rather than harsh, then 190°C for cookie sweetness and humulene depth — dense, resinous, three draws, and the honest note in the review that the resin was visibly building on the chamber walls. The Roffu ran Jealousy through quartz at 175°C for immediate cream — linalool and limonene without a trace of harshness — then 190°C for the gas arriving underneath, caryophyllene spice asserting itself over three more draws from the same bowl. Both pass the resolution test that actually matters: cream and pepper and gas as separate nameable things rather than one smeared sweet. The comparative observation that follows from both reviews is about what happens afterwards. Gorilla Girl coated the Äris's airpath and the ECA had it factory-clean in under two minutes. Jealousy through the Roffu leaves the same resin across chambers, screens, mouthpiece parts and a zirconia spiral, and the Roffu's own review sets its deep-clean cadence at weekly, or fortnightly if you're disciplined with capsules. The heavy strains are where the £20 gap runs backwards.
The call: on flavour, this is a genuine draw and both reviews say so in their own words — exceptional for the money, convection doing what convection does. Treat the family comparison as directional, not decisive, because it isn't the control. And keep the two-minute clean-down in your head, because the resinous end of the shelf is where these two devices stop being interchangeable.
Design & Build
Winner: Wolkenkraft Äris. 8.0/10 versus 7.5/10, and the gap is entirely about confidence.
The Äris is 133g, compact, gold-plated mouthpiece ring, crisp OLED, made in Germany with a five-year warranty behind it. It is, admittedly, a Fenix Pro in a Wolkenkraft badge — four-plus years of co-development, same platform — which its review flagged as transparency rather than scandal, and which arguably adds credibility given the Fenix Pro's record.
The Roffu is anodised aluminium with a bright colour OLED and haptics, and it feels like more money than it costs right up until the QC lottery comes up. Loose glass chamber screens across multiple production batches. Button presses that don't register. Zirconia mouthpiece parts that separate after repeated disassembly. Its review was blunt about this: many units are fine, enough aren't to warrant inspecting yours on arrival, and the twelve-month warranty is a thinner net than I'd like under a device with documented assembly issues. The dual-chamber mechanism itself, ironically, is the bit that never fails — twist, pull, swap, five seconds, satisfying click.
Five years versus one year is the sentence to read twice. The canteen is inspected. The gastropub is trusted.
Battery & Charging
Winner: XLUX Roffu, comfortably. 8.5/10 versus 7.0/10, and this is the Roffu's best category.
Removable 18650 at 3200mAh, 10–12 sessions per charge, 90 minutes on USB-C, and a spare cell in your pocket doubles the day. Buy two, keep one on an external charger, and the Roffu never runs out — it just asks you to plan. That's the same economics that keeps old 18650 devices alive years after sealed rivals have quietly degraded.
The Äris manages 6–8 sessions from a sealed 2600mAh cell, charges in about eighty minutes, and supports pass-through — which the Roffu doesn't recommend, and which genuinely matters if you mostly vape at a desk. So the Äris loses the numbers and wins the plug socket. Moderate user, one evening: fine either way. Heavy user, away from power: the Roffu, and it isn't close.
Ease of Use
Winner: XLUX Roffu, narrowly and slightly awkwardly. 7.5/10 versus 7.0/10.
Neither of these is a load-and-go device, and they fail that test for opposite reasons. The Roffu asks you to learn convection technique — grind medium, pack loose but not airy, draw at a speed that doesn't cool the heater — plus a decision about which chamber before you've had a draw. Its review put the learning curve at three to five sessions and its Mum test at a straight FAIL: she'd get as far as "which cup do I put in?" and hand it back.
The Äris is technically simpler — set a temperature, pack a fine-medium grind, don't overpack, draw — and loses the category anyway, because of the noise. The convection fan is the number-one complaint on every forum, roughly electric-shaver volume, audible across a quiet room from three metres. That's not a spec-sheet gripe; it's a constraint on where the device can be used. Living room, fine. Anywhere that requires you not to be noticed, no. Its own Mum test came back MIXED for exactly this reason: she cleaned it without instruction, then it turned on.
So: the Roffu is harder to learn and the Äris is harder to live with. Half a point to the pub, and the extractor fan is why.
Cleaning & Maintenance
Winner: Wolkenkraft Äris — 10/10 versus 7.0/10, the widest gap on the card and the reason this comparison ends in a draw rather than a Roffu win.
The ECA (Easy Care Airpath) is the best cleaning system in portable vaping. No qualifier, no "for the price." Every component of the airpath separates; every millimetre from chamber to lips can be wiped, soaked, inspected. There's nowhere for gunk to hide, which means you don't have to believe it's clean — you can see that it is. A resin-heavy medical strain took under two minutes to clean down completely in its review. Brush after three or four sessions, full disassembly and ISO soak every five to seven, and that's the entire maintenance life of the device. The one blemish is the mouthpiece screen, which clogs after about five days of regular use and wants attention more often than everything else combined.
The Roffu has the opposite problem: it comes apart readily enough, but there's a lot of it. Two chambers, their screens, mouthpiece components and a zirconia cooling spiral, each on its own schedule — brush every two or three sessions, ISO the screens every five to seven, full disassembly weekly, spiral monthly. Dosing capsules genuinely help and halve the cadence, and I'd buy a set with the device rather than after it. But it's still a fortnightly job at best against a device where the job is essentially over before it starts.
Ten against seven is the canteen's kitchen inspection against the gastropub's. Both pass. Only one is framed on the wall.
Portability
Winner: XLUX Roffu. 8.0/10 versus 7.0/10 — which looks wrong until you remember what portability actually means.
On paper the Äris should take this: 133g against 166g, compact, visually discreet, jacket-pocket friendly. It loses on sound. You can pocket it, you can hold it discreetly, and the moment you press the button everyone in earshot knows something is happening. Park bench, fine. Library, absolutely not. Stealth mode dims the OLED, which is a bit like turning the lights down in the canteen.
The Roffu is heavier and has its own portability tax — both chambers retain heat aggressively and you're waiting ten-plus minutes after a high-temp session before it's pocket-safe. But it's quiet, it reads as "electronic gadget" rather than "vaporiser", and once cooled it goes in jeans at a push. Quiet and hot beats silent-looking and loud, every time, outdoors.
Value for Money
Winner: XLUX Roffu. 8.5/10 versus 8.0/10, with a £20 price gap running the same way.
At £109 the Roffu's spec list reads like a £150–180 device: true convection, two chambers, removable 3200mAh 18650, colour OLED, haptics, 1°C control, session and on-demand. Its review's honest asterisk is the QC — a properly assembled Roffu is one of the best values in portable vaping; a Roffu with a loose screen and a sticky button is a £109 frustration, and the twelve-month warranty is the whole of your safety net.
The Äris justifies £129 differently: ECA, titanium, pyrex, pass-through, 1°C from 100°C upward — that low start is worth noting if you're chasing CBD-dominant terpenes other devices can't reach — and a five-year warranty that works out at under £30 a year. That's the value argument its review made and it holds: a vaporiser you can fully clean outlasts one you can't, and prevention is cheaper than maintenance.
Half a point to the Roffu on the card, and the £20 says the same thing. But the Roffu's value is conditional on your unit, and the Äris's isn't.
Score Comparison
| Category | Wolkenkraft Äris | XLUX Roffu |
|---|---|---|
| Vapour Quality | 8.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Design & Build | 8.0/10 | 7.5/10 |
| Battery & Charging | 7.0/10 | 8.5/10 |
| Ease of Use | 7.0/10 | 7.5/10 |
| Cleaning & Maintenance | 10/10 | 7.0/10 |
| Portability | 7.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Value for Money | 8.0/10 | 8.5/10 |
| Overall | 7.8/10 | 7.8/10 |
Read that honestly and the shape of it is unusual. The Roffu wins four categories, draws one and loses two — and finishes exactly level, because one of the two it loses is lost by three whole points. The Roffu is more consistently good. The Äris is the only one of the pair that is, in one category, perfect. Both cards total the same. Neither device is being flattered.
Who Should Buy Which
Buy the Wolkenkraft Äris if you think about the inside of the airpath. You already know if you're this person. You're the one who finishes a deep clean and still isn't quite sure — who wonders what's behind the screen, in the bend the pipe cleaner didn't reach. The Äris ends that. It's also the better answer for medical users rotating strains, because a fully cleanable path means no residual terpenes from last week's flower contaminating this week's dose, and for microdosers, because 0.15g stops you at one dose whether you meant to stop or not. You are, in return, accepting a device that announces itself in any quiet room and gives you six to eight sessions between charges.
Buy the XLUX Roffu if you want capability per pound and you're prepared to inspect what turns up. Two chambers is genuinely two devices — quartz for a Friday when the flower deserves it, steel for an evening when it doesn't. On-demand mode is the feature the Äris simply hasn't got, and for breakthrough pain it's the difference between three controlled draws and a five-minute committed session. The removable cell means the device never really ages out. Test everything on arrival, buy a spare 18650 and a set of capsules, and budget the cleaning time.
The wrong buyer for the Äris is anyone who needs to be unheard, or who'll reload three times an evening and resent it. The wrong buyer for the Roffu is anyone who wants to open the box, load it and never think about it again — that person should be looking at hybrid conduction, and both reviews said so.
How I Actually Choose
The rotation data doesn't lie, and I keep rotation data, because ADHD.
The Äris is my clean-room vape. It comes out when I want to taste absolutely nothing except the flower, at 180°C, 0.15g, five-minute timer, kitchen door shut — a compromise Sarah negotiated and I've kept. It's the device I trust implicitly after a clean, and that trust is worth more to me than the six-to-eight sessions it gives back.
The Roffu is the Friday device. Quartz chamber, 185°C, good flower, and the on-demand trigger for pain hits during the week when I don't want a whole session. It gets reached for more often than the Äris and thought about less, right up until deep-clean night, when the position reverses entirely.
Tom's the useful data point here. He bought the original Äris three days before the Ultra landed at the same money — that story's in the review and he tells it better than I do — and when I asked him last month how he was getting on with the ECA, he admitted he has never taken it apart. Not once, in six months. "It's not dirty yet." It is. He owns the best cleaning system in portable vaping and has used it precisely zero times, which is the most Tom thing I have ever heard and also, genuinely, an argument: a 10 in cleaning is only worth 10 to someone who cleans.
I'm someone who cleans. That's why the Äris earns its shelf. If you're Tom, the Roffu is £20 cheaper and you're not going to scrub either of them anyway.
The Verdict (The Bookend)
Nobody who eats in both a canteen and a gastropub thinks they're choosing between two versions of the same lunch.
The canteen is certainty: one dish, small portion, immaculate steel, everything visible, and a roar over the range you learn to shout through. The gastropub is capability: two menus, bigger plates, better value, a cellar worth exploring, and the occasional night where the pass gets away from them. On this site's scoring they feed you equally well — 7.8 apiece, from two cards that add up to the same number by opposite routes.
If you want the honest tiebreak, it's this: the Roffu is £20 cheaper, wins four categories, and is the better device on the spec sheet. The Äris wins because of one number that the Roffu cannot reach, and that number only pays out if you're the sort of person who actually uses it. Buy the Roffu if you want more vaporiser for less money and you'll gamble on the batch. Buy the Äris if you've ever finished cleaning a vape and still not been sure.
The canteen for the certainty. The pub for the Friday. And if you can only have one, be honest about which of those two sentences describes you — because both devices scored 7.8, and that's the site telling you the decision was never about the score.
FAQ
Wolkenkraft Äris vs XLUX Roffu — which should I buy? It's a genuine draw: 7.8 each. The Roffu is £20 cheaper (£109.00 vs £129.00), has a removable 18650, on-demand mode and two chambers. The Äris has the ECA airpath, a titanium chamber and a five-year warranty against the Roffu's one. Buy the Roffu for capability per pound, the Äris for cleaning certainty and quiet-batch confidence.
Which one tastes better? Neither — both reviews scored vapour quality identically, and both are pure convection. The Äris is the more neutral path (titanium into pyrex, nothing added). The Roffu's quartz chamber matches it for terp separation and its steel chamber trades definition for density. If you want two flavour profiles from one device, that's the Roffu. If you want one, kept surgically clean, that's the Äris.
Is the Äris really that loud? Yes. Roughly electric-shaver volume, audible across a quiet room. It's the single biggest reason the Äris loses ease of use and portability despite being the lighter, simpler device. If you vape with music on you'll forget about it; if you vape in silence, or need not to be noticed, it's disqualifying.
Should I worry about the Roffu's QC? Enough to inspect the unit on arrival and test everything — loose glass chamber screens, inconsistent button registration and separating mouthpiece parts are documented across batches, not universal. Buy from somewhere with a sensible returns policy. The twelve-month warranty is standard for the price but thin given the known issues.
Which is easier to clean, and by how much? The Äris, by three points — 10 against 7, the biggest gap in this comparison. ECA means the whole airpath separates and every surface is visible; a resin-heavy strain cleaned down in under two minutes. The Roffu has two chambers, their screens, mouthpiece parts and a zirconia spiral, and wants a full disassembly weekly. Dosing capsules roughly halve that.
Which has the better battery? The Roffu: removable 18650, 3200mAh, 10–12 sessions, 90-minute USB-C charge, and a spare cell doubles your day. The Äris gets 6–8 sessions from a sealed 2600mAh in about eighty minutes — but it supports pass-through charging and the Roffu doesn't recommend it, so at a desk the Äris is effectively unlimited.
Do either of them handle medical use better? Both make a case. The Äris's fully cleanable path means no cross-contamination between strains, and 1°C control from 100°C lets you target specific terpene activation points. The Roffu's on-demand mode is the more precise dosing tool — short button-held draws for breakthrough pain without committing to a session. Cleanliness versus control. Details in both full reviews, and the temperature guide covers the terpene targets. I'm not a doctor; talk to your clinic.
About Dennis M.
Dennis M. has been reviewing vaporisers and vaping daily for the best part of a decade. He works in IT, has ADHD, and uses cannabis for chronic pain management. He lives in Manchester with his partner Sarah, who has ruled on the Äris's fan noise and does not intend to revisit the ruling.
Dennis would like it noted that he has eaten in both a works canteen and a gastropub in the same week and enjoyed both, and that the canteen was, on balance, the better meal. He accepts this says something about him.
A note on spelling: 'vaporizer' is the de facto international spelling, but I've stuck with the British 'vaporiser' throughout this blog.
Questions, corrections, or a device you want tested? dennis@herbvape.co.uk
Related Content
Full Reviews: - Wolkenkraft Äris Review: The Dyson Fan of Vaporisers → - XLUX Roffu Review: The Kärcher Pressure Washer of Vaporisers →
More Comparisons: - All head-to-heads →
New to Convection? - The Temperature Guide →
How I Score: - Methodology →
Get Both at HerbVape.co.uk {#shop}
Wolkenkraft Äris — £129.00 XLUX Roffu — £109.00
Neither device has a live product page on the site at the time of writing — check the head-to-head hub or the full reviews above for current availability. If you're buying the Roffu elsewhere, buy from a retailer with a proper returns policy and inspect the chamber screens on arrival; if you're buying the Äris, budget for a spare mouthpiece screen, because that's the one part the ECA can't save you from.
Just one more bowl.
Review Policy: I buy or borrow the devices I review. HerbVape.co.uk is my employer, but my opinions are my own — they pay me to be honest, not to sell you shite. Affiliate links and discount codes exist because running a site costs money, not because they influence scores. Scoring method: /pages/methodology.
A note on the strain control: Jack Herer and Wedding Cake run through every vaporiser on this site so the strain is the constant and the device is the variable. Neither the Äris nor the Roffu has been through that circuit — the Äris was reviewed on Gelonade and Curaleaf Gorilla Girl T24, the Roffu on Jealousy and Noidecs T20:C4 Delahaze. The comparisons above are made by terpene family and flagged as directional rather than controlled. Both devices are queued for the control strains; this comparison will be updated when they've run it. Strain effects vary by individual, batch and consumption method.
Medical & Legal Disclaimer: Nothing in this comparison constitutes medical advice, and I am not a medical professional. Cannabis is a controlled substance in the UK; medical cannabis is legal only on prescription from a registered specialist clinic. HerbVape.co.uk sells vaporiser hardware only: we do not sell, prescribe, or recommend cannabis or cannabis products. Vaporisers are sold for use with legal dry herbs and legally prescribed medical cannabis. You must be 18 or over to buy one, and cannabis law varies by jurisdiction — check yours.